What We Talk About When We Talk About Solar

This week, I want to go over a case study in rainwater harvesting design. This example is special to me because it’s about how we partnered with my mother-in-law to transform her property into a [...]

Designing Your Own Passive Solar Greenhouse, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of this series on how you can design your own greenhouse that can extend the planting season, enhance growing conditions, and provide a cheery space for those dark winter days. [...]

On Living Larders, Part 1: A Definition

On our way back home from a consultancy, Takota Coen and I were talking about how brilliant permaculture is at solving problems, specifically when it comes to food security. After some productive [...]

The Hidden Risks of Autonomous Farming, Part 2

Last time, I posed the following questions: 1) What are the hidden black swans associated with relegating all food production to robotics? 2) Is food production important enough that we should [...]

The Hidden Risks of Autonomous Farming, Part 1

I thought it would be a good time to kick off 2018 with a piece looking at the future and the brave new world of autonomous farming. But in order to look forward, let’s think like historians and [...]

On Climate Change Adaptation, Part 1

Recently, I attended a community meeting where we spoke about looming climate shifts. As part of the evening, we watched a presentation by Stuart Scott from Columbia University on the future of [...]

3 Myths Around Permaculture Business and Consulting

Rob here. I’ve been consulting in the permaculture world for close to a decade now. Before that, I consulted in the oil and gas industry for another five, so suffice it to say I’ve been around [...]

Land as Insurance, Part 3: The Role of Farms

Here is part 1 and part 2 of the Land as Insurance series. In an attempt to understand how to create insurance for my family around food, water, energy, and money, I came up with the idea of [...]

Land as Insurance, Part 2: The Black Swan Theory

Last time, we talked about predictable risk that falls within a Gaussian distribution. But not all risk follows this pattern; some risks are rare and catastrophic and can only be explained in [...]

Storing Heat Underground in a Geo Solar System

As an engineer and permaculture designer living in a cold-climate, I am particularly fascinated with the interplay between thermodynamics and design and with capturing “waste” energy [...]

Urban Swales

Last year, we did a series of videos looking at the swale systems on our property and demonstration site. Part one looks at how we’ve combined the featuress of a Hügelkultur system, a wicking [...]

Using A Drone In Permaculture Design

Until recently, going to google maps, to get a birds eye view of a location was the default option for many Permaculture Practitioners and Consultants, but the main limitation was it could not be [...]

Urban Swales Part 2: Construction, Spillways & Catchbasins

This second video in the urban swales series looks at permaculture design with water as the primary consideration. Here I work on redirecting water passively from roofs and topsoil overflow areas [...]

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